Postal Worker Investigated, Boss Learns She Faked Cancer Diagnosis

By: Alexander Burns | February 20, 2019

A woman used a rather unseemly excuse to avoid work, and now she's paying the price.

In 2015, Caroline Boyle began telling her colleagues and friends that she was suffering from an aggressive form of cancer and had a failing immune system. Ms. Boyle was too sick for work and submitted a doctor’s note to her boss at the Postal Service of Aurora, Colorado.

The doctor’s note described how Ms. Boyle required rest to recover from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – a cancer that targets white blood cells in the lymphatic system. For two years, Ms. Boyle continued to receive wages for administrative sick leave while she ‘recovered’ from cancer.

However, in a stunning turn of events, it has since been revealed that the former postal worker was faking her condition from the very beginning. When suspicious USPS investigators reviewed the signature on Ms. Boyle’s doctor’s note, they discovered that it was a sloppy forgery.

Upon closer examination, the investigators also noticed that Ms. Boyle had misspelled the name of her doctor.

After the evidence was revealed against her, Ms. Boyle pleaded guilty in an Aurora District Court. In a prepared statement, the acting U.S. Attorney for Colorado, Bob Troyer, described the punishment for Ms. Boyle’s crimes: 5 years of probations, 6 months of home confinement (with monitoring from an electronic bracelet), a $10,000 fine and another restitutive fine of $20,798.38.

The latter figure is restitution for the money that Ms. Boyle defrauded from USPS over two years of paid sick leave.

Jeff Dorschner, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office Colorado, offered up information about the case during an interview with the Washington Post. Among other things, Mr. Dorschner was able to reveal that Ms. Boyle had been employed by USPS since she started in 1991.

According to district court documents, Ms. Boyle told the Court that she was planning to keep defrauding USPS until her retirement.

Ms. Boyle first attracted the attention of USPS investigators when her extended sick leave was cross-referenced with a previous incident in the Aurora office. One of Ms. Boyle’s subordinates had been denied administrative sick leave after finding out that they had cancer – for real this time.

Ms. Boyle, who had not yet embarked on her defrauding scheme, appears to have been inspired by the unnamed employee’s horrible situation. Ms. Boyle’s attorney, David Owen Jr., has declined to comment on the case.

Scott Pierce, the Executive Special Agent in Charge, released a statement about Ms. Boyle’s reprehensible actions, writing: “The American public trusts that U.S. Postal Service employees will obey the law. This type of behavior within the Postal Service is not tolerated and the overwhelming majority of Postal Service employees, which serve the public, are honest, hardworking, and trustworthy individuals who would never consider engaging in any type of criminal behavior.”

Meanwhile, a Justice official involved in the bizarre case gave a more humorous opinion to the Washington Post. “If you’re going to defraud the government with a doctor’s note, make sure to spell the name right,” the official declared.